Music

Tuesday, March 29, 2005

For those of you interested in the developing story of journalistic integrity and credibility and its existence or lack thereof within the blogosphere, Slate editor Jack Shafer, who routinely reports on the blogging phenomenon for the magazine, has published a tough-talking rebuttal to yesterday’s Los Angeles Times column by media reporter and critic David Shaw. Shafer takes on Shaw’s “1,300 gassy words” and generalizations about the intentions and failings of bloggers. He also effectively calls the critic on the carpet for lumping Matt Drudge and impenetrable “Dear Diary”-type bloggers in with those who are working hard to build reputations for reliability and thoroughness, to be taken seriously as journalists, and who take advantage of the technology’s ability to correct the kinds of mistakes and oversights that take much longer to acknowledge and fix in TV and print media, if they’re acknowledged or fixed at all. It’s a fascinating read and a convincing response to Shaw’s rather paranoid piece, and there are additional links on the page to Slate articles by Shafer and others about blogging.

Also in Slate this week is a nice write-up on Sandra Oh, which emerges from a rather withering review of her new ABC series Grey’s Anatomy.

Regular readers of this blog won’t be shocked by the news that she’s emerged of late as one of my favorite actresses, and therefore I’m somewhat ashamed to admit that I fogged out and missed the show’s premiere last Sunday night. Liz Penn, writing on Slate as Dana Stevens, gives the show middling marks, writing off at least the first episode as an uninspired E.R.-Sex and the City hybrid. However, Stevens says that Oh’s “delightfully bilious” characterization rises to the top and away from the wreckage of the rest of the show and that she’ll hopefully be able to parlay her experience here into better roles in films and, perhaps, even another TV show that might better showcase her abilities. I don’t know about Grey’s Anatomy (yet), but I’m in favor of anything that gets this terrifically sexy and funny actress in front of a camera.

Finally, the response to Mr. Hand’s Spring 2005 Pop Movie Pop Quiz has been very gratifying and a whole lot of fun. When I got into the task of compiling my own list a couple of days ago I realized just how NOT EASY the whole undertaking really was, so I appreciate even more the time and efforts of everyone who has responded so far. I’m still looking for more lists, if I can get ‘em, and when I do I’ll compile another list of the best responses and create a brand-new post for everyone to see. Homework was never this fun, was it?

Friday, March 25, 2005

Everyone loves a pop quiz. Well, that may not exactly be true, but nobody seems to mind one that gets us thinking about the movies, the ones we love to think about, the ones that inform our lives and make it better, the ones that mean the most to us. Well, there are questions in the quiz below that may address some of those movies. But there are also questions below that are meant only to jog your memory, make you make associations, perhaps bring up an aspect of the movies, or going to the movies, that you’d set aside as trivial or perhaps hadn’t ever given much thought to (and probably for a good reason). There are no right answers to this quiz, just your answers. And, unlike the pop history exam in Mr. Hand’s class, if you check back on this page over the next few days you’ll get a chance to peek over to someone else’s desk and see their answers without getting yelled at in front of other students, drawing detention, or having the teacher stop by your house at an inopportune time for an impromptu catch-up lesson to help make up for having wasting his time in the classroom. Everyone is invited to drop their answers in the Comments column below, regular posters to this site, those who regularly lurk and don’t usually comment, or anyone else stumbling across this site for the first time. You can provide short, concise responses, or you can elaborate to your heart’s content, and if you feel the need and have the time to elaborate, please do—those are often the answers that are most fun for the rest of us to read. So now, class, pencils ready? Have an excellent Easter weekend… and begin.

1) The one movie you’d drop everything just to see again.2) The one movie you never want to see again under any circumstances. 3) The most treasured DVD in your personal collection.4) The most coveted DVD you like to add to your collection.5) Best NYC movie?6) Best LA movie?7) Best movie ever made in or about your home state, or country?8) Humphrey Bogart or Jimmy Cagney?9) Best movie remake?10) The one movie you’d most like to see remade, and by whom (director, cast).11) Best integration of an existing piece of music into a movie.12) Most unwelcome pop song typically used in a movie montage.13) Movie that made you want to change your life, or the world.14) Katherine Hepburn or Carole Lombard?15) Your father’s favorite movie.16) Your mother’s favorite movie.17) The movies’ most handsome leading man or character actor, and the role which most perfectly featured him.18) The movies’ most beautiful leading lady or character actress, and the role which most perfectly featured her. 19) Jimmy Stewart or Cary Grant?20) Your favorite actor who almost nobody knows about.21) Your favorite actress who almost nobody knows about.22) The movie you love that everyone else seems to hate.23) The movie you hate that everyone else seems to love.24) Your most memorable moment related to the movies.25) Your most unpleasant moment related to the movies.26) Most revolting eating scene in a movie.27) Joan Crawford or Bette Davis?28) Your favorite sports movie.29) Your favorite movie sex scene.30) Your favorite movie car chase.31) Your favorite death scene.32) Your favorite movie gross-out.33) Your favorite movie rating.34) Your favorite movie theater.35) Your favorite movie snack.36) Your favorite movie speech.37) Your favorite movie about movies.38) Your favorite Hammer horror movie.39) Your favorite Kurt Russell Disney movie.40) Your favorite Dean Jones Disney movie.

Wednesday, March 23, 2005

Any actor whose presence who could get me to even consider seeing Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous would have to be said to be someone with undue influence over my emotions and my moviegoing tendencies. Well, it turns out that Sandra Bullock’s costar in this wacky sequel to the wacky Miss Congeniality(2000) is Regina King. So I figure that, before I go and spend $10 on the movie this coming weekend, thus inspiring fear and trembling over my mental state among friends and relatives for doing so, this is as good a time as any to come clean about my big crush on this talented actress. I first discovered her as Marla Gibbs’ sassy daughter on the forgettable sitcom 227 and figured that, despite her spunk and vitality, she’d probably never make it out of the TV comedy wasteland. So when she started showing up in movies like Boyz N The Hood, Poetic Justice and Friday, I was encouraged that she might get something going on after all. And my wife says she’s terrific in a little-seen straight-to-video feature called Love and Action in Chicago. But I think I officially flipped for her as Cuba Gooding’s tough, sexy wife in Jerry Maguire. Ever since then, I’ve imagined every meaty movie role for a young woman with Regina King replacing whatever relative nonentity who was actually cast—imagine how much better Monsters Ball might have been with King squaring off against Billy Bob Thornton. There might have been some actual tension there, and King would have made me believe the extremes of that character’s behavior, as written, that were way out of Halle Berry’s limited range. Ray is the latest showcase for King’s phenomenal energy and presence (until this weekend, I suppose), and I really hope that movie’s popularity opens some doors for her. There’s no reason why casting directors shouldn’t have the imagination to see her in just about any role for which Ashley Judd or Renee Zellweger would be routinely considered (and hopefully the roles she'd get would be better than the ones these actresses routinely accept). Moviegoers live to be seduced by big brown eyes as spectacular as the ones King has at her disposal, eyes that can gaze with tender care, but also burn through you with disbelief and fury in the split second it takes to blink. Audiences, and the movies, will be the ones to gain if we get more opportunities to gaze back at those eyes in the future, in roles that are worthy of them, of course. Directors, say no to Julia, to Angelina, to Gwenyth, and start saying yes, and please, and thank you, and what can I get for you, to Regina King.

About a month ago, I finally caught up with Wes Anderson’s The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou and found myself completely underwhelmed, disappointingly so. I wondered just how I’d gotten to the crossroads of dissolution and unfulfilled expectations with this filmmaker, and how Anderson himself seemed to go from full of possibilities (Bottle Rocket) to the fulfilling of a major new voice (Rushmore), to exciting talent treading water (The Royal Tenenbaums), to filmmaker of listless indulgences, stylistic recycling and meandering storytelling (The Life Aquatic) in just four films. The depths of my disappointment were great enough that I felt I had to write about the film, and fully intended to do so immediately after seeing it. But life, as it will, has intervened since then, frequently enough to bring me other subjects to write about, as well as babies to cook, dinner to bounce on my knee and everyday chores to ignore until they can be ignored no longer. Enough time has passed, in fact, that I feel like in order to do justice to my own responses, and the experience of the film, I should see it again. The DVD is scheduled to be released on May 10, and I will make this solemn vow, right here in front of God, Sergio Leone and everyone else, that will write, and extensively, about the films of Wes Anderson, and specifically The Life Aquatic, concurrent with that DVD release.

Round about the same time that I saw The Life Aquatic, I saw another film that couldn’t have been more stylistically and temperamentally unrelated to Anderson’s film—Ronald Neame’s 1956 drama of World War II intrigue called The Man Who Never Was. In it, British forces attempt to fool the Germans into expecting an invasion of Greece, thus drawing troops away from Churchill’s actual target—Sicily— by planting letters and other indicators of the false move on the body of a dead aviator left floating off the coast of Spain, expecting that the body will be intercepted by German intelligence and the “plan” discovered. The movie follows the idea from its conception by two British naval officers (Clifton Webb and Robert Flemyng), through the procurement of an appropriate and usable body, to the amassing of details to be planted on that body that will lead the Germans into accepting the corpse as that of a British officer killed in a plane crash while on his way to deliver correspondence related to the false invasion.

Gloria Grahame, one of my all-time favorite actresses, also stars as an American librarian whose doomed romance with a British flyer provides the text of a love letter that is planted on the body, a letter on which the success of the deception will ultimately hinge. The blowsy Grahame, whose eyes look perpetually puffy from weeping, even when she’s happy, is flat-out brilliant in the scene in which she dictates the letter’s text to her roommate (Josephine Griffin), an assistant to Webb who has no idea that the impassioned romantic yearning Grahame details for her transcription is based on anything other than the librarian’s abilities as a writer to empathize with the anguished straits of a fictional character. And Clifton Webb’s double-starched, non-nonsense British officer, the kind of character, and performance, that fueled the imaginations of the Monty Python troupe to the satiric stratosphere, mirrors the movie’s straight-ahead, clean-cut storytelling and lends it exactly the right measure of gravity, as well as fueling a surprising willingness to confront the assumptions of British imperialism. At one point Webb must speak to the father of the boy whose body will be used in the scheme and offer his assurances of respect toward the young man. He also offers, by means of condolence, the suggestion that the boy would have been proud to do his part for England in this way, and the boy’s father, immersed in mourning, comes up short: “My son is a Scot, sir. You British always say ‘England’ when you mean ‘Britain.’ But we’re used to it.” Webb’s officer can offer no defense, yet the movie doesn’t use this moment as ammunition against the Empire so much as an observation of the political and geographical differences that some might assume were effectively papered over in time of war.

The movie generates a considerable amount of suspense in the concoction of the plan, its execution, and most especially in its last half, when a Nazi spy (Stephen Boyd) comes to London to investigate the veracity of the evidence found about the dead officer’s existence, an assignment which eventually leads him to Griffin and Grahame’s doorstep. In fact, it’s a bit surprising how involving it all is, and that's a testimony to the effectiveness of its deliberate pace and refusal of any kind of stylistic ostentation—there might not be 250 cuts in the entire movie, and the cinematography, by Oswald Morris, is appropriately unfussy and, at times, beautiful.

I was fascinated at just how much more I found myself preferring the relatively stodgy, stiff-upper-lip craftsmanship of The Man Who Never Was to Anderson’s loose, yet somehow programmatic and self-conscious hipster distractions. Part of that, I suppose, can be laid at the feet of creeping age and my preference, of late, for the elemental classicism of British and American filmmaking of the ‘30s, ‘40s and ‘50s. But it’s also receptiveness to a style and sensibility that is diametrically opposed to the kind of sloppy hijinks that pass as personal filmmaking, not to mention generational statements, in films like The Life Aquatic. It’s just part of what I want to more fully engage when Anderson’s movie is released on DVD on May 10. Sometime around that same time (I don’t know specifically when as yet), there will be a DVD release of The Man Who Never Was. I intend to revisit that film as well, enthusiastically, and I would encourage everyone to do the same.

Just a reminder for horror fans: Tales of Terror: The Films of Vincent Price, a seven-film retrospective, begins its run at the Egyptian and Aero Theaters this weekend. It’ll be a rare opportunity to see the brilliantly moody Masque of the Red Death, with luridly gorgeous cinematography courtesy of Nicolas Roeg, on the big screen, as well as favorites like Tales of Terror, The House on Haunted Hill, The Tingler and, of course, two of Price’s greatest, Theatre of Blood and The Abominable Dr. Phibes. The festival also highlights a rare screening, for those who can stomach it (this jaded horror fan had a pretty hard time), of Witchfinder General, known more commonly in America as The Conqueror Worm. For theatre locations, dates and showtimes, click here, if you dare…

It seems that two Peter Fonda car-chase classics of the mid-70s will be arriving on DVD soon. Those who grooved to the wild stunts and fashionable fatalism of Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry back in the drive-in day have got a spiffy digital treat coming to a Best Buy near you in the coming months. But even more exciting for connoisseurs of excellent car crashes who like a little satanic horror mixed in with their high-octane thrills is the news that director Jack Starrett’s overlooked drive-in gem Race with the Devil is finally making its way to DVD. Race also stars Warren Oates, Loretta Swit (TV’s Hot Lips Houlihan) and Lara Parker (who fanned a few adolescent flames as the witch Angelique on the gothic soap Dark Shadows) as two couples on a motor home vacation who accidentally witness a human sacrifice and spend the rest of the movie high-tailing it through the backwoods country with the county’s multitude of fuel-injected Satan-worshippers in hot (and I mean hell hot) pursuit. Any movie with the word “devil” in the title that casts R.G. Armstrong as a local sheriff ought to give you enough of a clue that just about every friendly local these poor city slickers come across is gonna turn out to be one of Lucifer’s lapdogs, so don’t let yourself get too comfortable while you’re watching! As for me, I’m headed out right now to reserve my copies of both movies. The mid-70s were the halcyon days of the cinematic car chase, and these are perhaps two of the finest examples of the form. Now, if only we could get Walter Hill’s The Driver on DVD as well, that triple feature would be just about all that needed to be, or even could be said about the joys of lead-footed, high-octane pursuit.

Monday, March 21, 2005

It’s been a pretty busy time, at work and with my family, but also with projects that have come about because of what’s been happening on this blog. To my great and happy surprise, I’ve got several irons in the literary fire right now, and the first one just came out today, glowing red-hot and ready for cowhide. If you click on over to 24 Lies A Second, you’ll see that yours truly has an article freshly published on the front page of this excellent online film journal. It’s a new version of one of the first articles to be published on this blog waaaaaay back in November of 2004, "Pleasures Worthy of Guilt." I was asked to submit it for publication by the journal’s founder, Peter Gelderblom, when he discovered this blog and liked what he read. The main difference in what I posted in November and what you’ll see on 24 Lies A Second today is that it has been spruced up considerably by 24 Lies editor-in-chief Jim Moran, who is, like Peter Gelderblom, very encouraging, accommodating and honest in his appraisals. And the piece is actually a little longer! (Some of you are saying to yourselves right now, "This is good news?!") Yes, not only did these gentlemen like what they read and not ask me to cut it down, they actually asked me to add a few short paragraphs at the end to sum everything up. I could never figure out how to end the piece when I originally wrote it, so in its original form it just kind of peters out. But the suggestion of the extra paragraphs kick-started my thinking on it, and the result is an article that feels whole to me for the first time. So if you can stand the thought of revisiting "Pleasures Worthy of Guilt," or if you've never read it at all, I encourage you to visit 24 Lies A Second and scope out the new model's improved lines. And while you're there, take advantage of the opportunity to partake of all the other terrific, provocative, serious film writing that's available there. It's all there for the love of film. Thanks, Peter and Jim, for inviting me to become part of the fine work you're doing. It's an honor.

Friday, March 18, 2005

At the risk of being mistaken for Nadejda Fillaretovna von Meck, it is my pleasure to direct you to today's edition of Wailing and Gnashing for a splendiferous treat entitled "Ode on My Junk E-Mail Folder." I've already reserved a spot on my 2005 Top Ten List for this post. It's just more evidence of the prodigious writing talent of one Loxjet, overseer of this interesting site. Enjoy, and have a good weekend (It's raining in Los Angeles, so everything's off to a perfect start!)

Oh, and just in case anyone was wondering what this has to do with movies or baseball, the answer is: nothing. But, just to get things back on track, the Dodgers are on TV Sunday (check your local listings). And if anyone manages to find the six hours it takes to see the acclaimed new Italian film The Best of Youth, I'd surely love to hear about it. The only thing I get to do for six hours at a time these days is type, and occasionally sleep. Sounds like another Netflix wish fulfillment fantasy in the making...

Thursday, March 17, 2005

I'm not going to drive you crazy proselytizing about Netflix. You needn't worry about me coming around your front screen door and haranguing you through through the mesh about how convenient the service is, or how wonderful the "queue" system is, not only as a way of ordering your preferences, but also just to simply keep track of everything you're interested in seeing. And I promise not to post every time I get a new movie and go on and on about what I saw.

Except maybe just this once.

The first movie I viewed courtesy of Netflix was Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, and it was an inauspicious introduction. Good thing Netflix only has to take credit for getting the movies to and from your house in expedient fashion, and not for the quality of the movie itself. After about 15 minutes of exposure to this over-designed retro sci-fi novelty exercise I felt like someone had thrown a blanket over my head. All I wanted to do was escape from all the nonexistent scenery and the virtually nonexistent narrative. But I stayed to the bitter end, and all I got for it was the creeps when the ghostly image of Laurence Olivier, through an old movie clip, is used (with permission from his estate, of course) as the movie's Oz-ian maguffin of a villain. Sky Captain is no worse than some of the movies Olivier made when he was alive (The Betsy), and it's far better than others (Inchon). But it unnerves me when a movie that prides itself on its 99.78% pure CGI template goes the extra step and reincarnates a dead actor to fill an important role. What hast thou wrought, Forrest Gump?

Jim Jarmusch's Dead Man is better, but still a tad on the overrated side. No doubt my receptiveness to the movie was increased by seeing it after Sky Captain-- never have real humans on screen looked so welcome. (I eventually decided that Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow must also have been computer-generated-- how else to explain that feature-length hollow look in their eyes?) Dead Man is a western filtered through Jarmusch's singular sensibility, and how far that takes you depends almost entirely on your fondness for that sensibility. For me, it goes on about a half hour too long. It's blackout structure made me feel disconnected throughout, surely an intentional effect-- Jarmusch is too hip for most rooms, let alone the 19th-century Oregon wilderness. The same can be said for the repetitive pattern of the encounters of one William Blake (Johnny Depp) that find him forced to murder almost everyone he comes across, thus confirming his status as a dangerous killer, something he certainly was not before the movie began. Dead Man is barely rescued through a lyricism that emerges in the final sequences from underneath all the movie's deadpan philosophical musings and matter-of-fact violence. It's an interesting journey, but, what with all of its literary allusions and mystical tendencies, not as interesting as Jarmusch would hope.

I also ended up feeling less enthusiastic about The Misfits than I thought I might, given Jon Weisman's fondness for it (related in March 1 article posted on Dodger Thoughts just after Arthur Miller's death). It's a far better movie than either of my other two choices, but frankly, it felt a mite overwritten to me in all the big moments, such as Marilyn Monroe's salt-flat eruption, or even her one-on-one confrontation with Clark Gable regarding the morality of his mustanging ways. Even so, the movie is very well acted, particularly by Gable and Montgomery Clift, and our knowledge of the fates of the three actors adds inadvertent poignancy to their performances, and to some of the seemingly prescient dialogue. The Misfits may be unsatisfying to many because its narrative is paced at an amble, not a trot or a gallop, and its ending is muted and slightly ambiguous, emotionally raw, yet quiet and unassuming. These are not faults, however, but instead choices of tone, and there is plenty of emotion to be plumbed from them. And director John Huston is admirably, tenaciously up to the task. The Misfits is well worth seeing.

All that, and I just finished my dishes while watching Anthony Mann's spectacular Bend of the River, another one of his unparalleled westerns with Jimmy Stewart. This is one of the great westerns, and I'm so glad for Netflix's return-'em-when-you-want-to M.O., because I already want to see this one again.

Finally, Netflix has a feature that allows you to compile a "friends" list-- fellow Netflixers who can show you how they rate the Netflix films they've seen and make their recommendations directly to you via e-mail. This is just another great way that the service encourages enthusiastic dialogue and promotes watching films you may not have considered or known about previously. And if you're lucky you'll have friends like I do who pepper your e-mail server with about 10 recommendations a day. One boundlessly enthusiastic cinephile pal has sent me almost 60 recommendations since I joined last week. If I didn't believe it before, Netflix has made it clear that no matter how long I live I'll never run out of interesting movies to watch. How's that for a blessing?

Monday, March 14, 2005

Never ones to be accused to being too imaginative, we’ve given our friend Andy the same birthday gift every year for 10 years now— the 365 Stupidest Things Ever Said desk calendar. Adapted from the popular book series that collects the most mind-bogglingly dumb things ever said by human beings great and small, the calendar metes out one asinine proclamation for each day, virtually guaranteeing the reader at least 365 laughs every year. Andy used to save the best ones and bring them by my desk to share, and now my wife carries on that tradition. As a result my computer monitor is littered with choice inanities that never fail to make me smile, roll my eyes and offer thanks that there are a lot of well-known people who don’t know well enough to think before they speak. But given some of the evidence cited below, I’m not sure thinking before speaking would necessarily do any good. It’d just cause their heads to hurt just a little bit more. So now, without further ado (or, in the spirit of this post, without further adieu),

MY FAVORITE DUMB THINGS HEARD FROM THE WORLD OF SPORTS:

#5: "Freedom of speech is when you talk." --Los Angeles Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda, appearing before a congressional committee on the First Amendment

#4: "I was glad to see Italy win. All the guys on the team were Italians." --Dodger manager Tommy Lasorda, on the soccer World Cup. (I get the feeling Tommy could fill his own book…)

And the number-one Stupidest Thing Ever Said from the World of Sports:

"A lot of people think it's going to take the mustard off the World Series. Well, the World Series will always have mustard on it. Anytime you're playing for the ring, there's going to be mustard involved."-- Relief pitcher Lee Smith, when asked whether interleague play would take the luster off the World Series

And now, because people who make movies can be awfully stupid too,MY FIVE FAVORITE DUMB THINGS HEARD FROM THE WORLD OF MOVIES:

#5: None-too-talented child actor Jake Lloyd, discussing the character of Anakin Skywalker, his role in Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, who will eventually become Darth Vader:"Anakin Skywalker is a lot like me. He's really mechanical."(This is really more of an embarrassing unintentional admission than a moment of pure stupidity, gleaned from one of the documentaries attached to the Phantom Menace DVD, but it was just so revealing that I couldn’t help but include it.)

#2: Film producer Harry Cohn: "You want to do a Bible epic? What do you know about the Bible? I'll bet you $50 you don't even know the Lord's Prayer."Producer Jack Cohn: "Now I lay me down to sleep..."Harry Cohn (pulling out $50): "Well, I'll be damned. I honestly didn't think you knew it."

And the #1 dumbest thing heard from the world of movies comes from an assistant to director Cecil B. DeMille who, when filming Samson and Delilah and discussing the scene in which Samson slays the Philistines with the jawbone of an ass, said to a colleague:

"The jawbone of an ass? Never! This is a DeMille picture and we've got to use the whole ass!"

Now, you and I know that the worlds of sports and movies are virtual Petri dishes of stupidity and that there must be far more than just five great examples from each that could have been inserted into this column. And I know some of you probably have even better sources than the 365 Stupidest Things Ever Said desk calendar at your disposal. If you’ve got a stupid comment from the world of movies or sports that rivals these, please drop ‘em in the comments column and share some asininity with the rest of us, who obviously don’t get enough of it in our daily lives.

First, Brad Penny threw a 65-pitch bullpen session yesterday and is feeling pretty good. Jim Tracy has expressed no great haste to push Penny to take the mound on Opening Day, which is good news-- after all, Penny is still in uncharted waters as far as this nerve injury. But this word from Florida has to be if not a huge sigh of relief for the Dodgers and their fans, then at least a momentarily relaxing of chest and diaphragm. Get the whole story here.

Also, Jayson Stark’s March 10 post on ESPN.com has some interesting observations from around the league, including a glowing report on Yhency Brazoban that amounts to a big “I told you so” from me and others who figured he looked to be who DePodesta had in mind to fill the void left by Guillermo Mota last summer. Says Stark:

Baseball's next great eighth-inning setup monster might just be the Dodgers' quasi-anonymous Yhency Brazoban. With Eric Gagne out for at least another week, the Dodgers have been running Brazoban out there in the ninth inning this spring. And let's just say manager Jim Tracy has enjoyed the view. "With his fastball and his slider, it's a little too early in the spring for hitters to be dialing up on that," Tracy said. "And he handled himself extremely well."As recently as last spring, after the Dodgers picked him up from the Yankees as an extra arm in the Kevin Brown-Jeff Weaver deal, Brazoban "wasn't even on our radar screen," Tracy said. But once the Dodgers traded away Guillermo Mota at the trading deadline, Brazoban just about saved their season."We would have liked to ease him in," Tracy said. "But we didn't have that luxury. So we had to speed the process up, and oh my gracious ... He pretty much became Mota for us by about the middle to latter part of August."

Just 21 days, 15 hours and two minutes to Opening Day. Bring on the Giants.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone at this point in DVD history to find out that most “Making Of” segments, routinely attached to features as part of the DVD’s bonus materials package, are little more than documentary-style puff pieces in which the cast and crew spout platitudes and praise about their experience making the movie. This puffery serves as back-end publicity, to be sure, and maybe even convinces some viewers after the fact that the crummy movie they just sat through wasn’t really that bad after all. But it’s also valuable as an exercise in seeing just how far some of the participants will go to convince themselves that the experience was a good one, or to make enough nice-nice to ensure (or at least not completely destroy the chances of) their working in this town again, and with some of these same filmmakers.

Then what to make of the rare “making of” documentary that isn’t about propping up shaky pronouncements about the quality of the film in question, or about salvaging its reputation through a clever bit of historically revisionist video? What about the “making of” doc that comes right out and says, We tried to do something with this movie, but we were undercut at every turn by studio pressure, M.P.A.A. slashers and perhaps even our own ineptitude as filmmakers, but the movie bombed and it’s really not much good anyway. Wouldn’t seeing something like that be kind of refreshing? You’d think so.

But it turns out there’s a certain amount of hubris that comes naturally fused even to trotting out your failures. The cast and crew interviewed for The Saw is Family: Making Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III (available on the Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III DVD) are a motley assembly of unpretentious exploitation filmmakers (with the exception of the slickly pretentious New Line Cinema executive Mark Ordesky, who oversaw the production). They spend the requisite amount of time grooving on the splatter-punk cool of retelling grisly stories about serial murderer Ed Gein, on whom both Leatherface and Norman Bates were based. Just so you know he’s down with that, the documentary’s director, Jeffrey Schwarz, treats us needlessly to notorious crime scene photos from the Gein capture that prefigure the movie series’ toned-down tendency to feature corpses as slaughterhouse slabs on the hook. (Ordesky even refers to the “Ed Gein myth.” Gein’s neighbors, and certainly his victims, would probably dispute that characterization. Maybe Ordesky’s the only one who didn’t see the crime photos.) And everybody from feature director Jeff Burr to screenwriter David J. Schow to producer Robert Engelman to actor William Butler makes very clear their reverence and appreciation for Tobe Hooper’s original Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) and even, to a lesser degree, Hooper’s own 1985 sequel. (Burr correctly refers to the original as a “seminal American independent film.”)

It’s when they get to talking about their own film that the enthusiasm wanes and the smiles quickly turn upside-down. Burr and Butler are remarkably up front about how the studio continually put pressure on the director and made it clear that, even though he made it to the top of a short list of potential hires, they didn’t much like him or what he was doing. And when it comes time to submit the movie to the M.P.A.A. ratings board, it becomes clear that the movie is in for a little evisceration of its own. Burr speaks with admiration at one point about the now-defunct Cannon Pictures’ decision to release Hooper’s garishly gruesome and funny The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part Two without a rating rather than submit it to excessive cutting. And one can hardly blame him for hoping that New Line would similarly back Part 3—after all, Ordesky himself claims that the studio was enthusiastic about the “tough, nasty” script and wanted to make “a straight-ahead terrifying horror film.” So when Ordesky starts recalling his own back-pedaling after hearing ominous words about the movie being banned in foreign countries, it’s like watching a rat in a three-piece suit tell you all about how he tried to scurry off of a sinking ship:

“The film is going to have to be released overseas. So, to the extent that you push the envelope while making the movie, you’ve got to find artful ways around it in the editing of the movie… He knew he was obligated to deliver an “R” rating, so it wasn’t like he was being dictated to.”

In other words, go ahead and shoot it as gory as you want, but just know that it’s all gonna end up on the floor rather than in the movie. In these days of restored DVD director’s cuts and deleted scenes, a filmmaker is less likely to get all tied up in knots when confronted with such nonsensical logic. And many directors nowadays, from horror schlockmeisters right on up to Martin Scorsese, deliberately shoot too much gore and violence, planning ahead on what can be pruned without dismantling the director’s vision of the movie. But Burr, knowing his lowly status within the New Line family, probably figured, and correctly, that once chopped up his movie was likely to stay that way. In fact, Burr even recognizes the folly of referring to a piece of exploitation like Leatherface as “his movie.” He laments at one point, “The film can never be yours. (Thinking that it could) was my mistake.” He comes off the most sympathetic of all the interviewees, not least for the naiveté that’s mixed in with his desire to be remembered as a scrappy independent filmmaker whose vision wasn’t allowed fruition.

What’s left, beyond this group gathering together to memorialize a film best left forgotten, is the self-inflating comments of some of the other participants. William Butler, who stars in the film as “Ryan,” starts off the documentary proclaiming that “I was in one of the most infamous horror films ever made!” A quick scan of his credits on the Internet Movie Database made me scratch my head on this claim—could he be referring to Ghoulies II? Maybe he means Friday the 13th V: The New Blood? Surely he can’t be referring to the tepid 1990 remake of Night of the Living Dead, or to Watchers III? So I suppose we’re to understand he means to describe Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III as “one of the most infamous horror films ever made!” I don’t have a dictionary at hand, but one of the definitions of “infamous” must be something on the order of “rapidly escaping from memory and sense as if it were passed gas.” Butler also claims to have been killed on-screen by Jason Voorheis, Leatherface and Freddy Krueger, yet there seems to be no Nightmare on Elm Street movie among his credits, so just how seriously can we take his assessment of horror film history? Speaking of film history, Butler’s just glad to be counted among its participants:

“I’m very proud to be in (Leatherface) because, no matter what people say about it, it’s still a tiny piece of movie history.”

Undeniably true. Bigger even than the piece of film history occupied by Ghoulies II, perhaps, yet dwarfed by the influential shadow of Friday the 13th V: The New Blood. My question is: what doth a man gain from spending 26 minutes cruelly assessing a movie’s shortcomings before attempting a last-minute, badly formulated salvage job on the film’s place in history just before the credits roll? Butler functions better within the doc as snarky VH1-style comic relief punctuating the sad story of the film’s production. Sincerity doesn’t suit him, at least when referring to Leatherface.

The documentary’s best joke, however, is saved for last. Producer Robert Engelman, who functioned at one point as New Line’s hatchet man, delivering their ultimatums and threats of termination to director Burr, is as honest throughout as anyone else about the trials enduring in producing this movie about a adopted nuclear family of cannibalistic killers who while away their days snatching young travelers off the dusty roads of Texas (actually, Valencia, California), torturing them and serving them up for Sunday dinner. So when he offers up his last comment, it’s time for a bit more head-scratching:

“When you’re filming it, it’s just fun and games. Everyone’s laughing and joking. You’re eating lunch next to the guy who’s dripping blood. It was like a real family, behind the camera as well as on camera.”

And then the perfect exclamation point for the entire documentary—a quick cut to a low-angle shot of William Butler (from the film) wielding a large rock, which he uses to land a death blow on someone’s head (and the camera). Roll credits. The producer makes a lame joke, or a thoughtless comparison, equating the film’s troubled (and, from his point of view, troublesome) cast and crew with the movie’s in-bred homicidal flesh-eaters, and one of those cast members gets to drop a big rock on his skull in return. Whether it’s a pointed rebuttal to Engelman’s comments, sly visual retribution on the part of the film’s talent, above and below the line, or just a nifty way to put an end to all the twisting and squirming over a 15-year-old horror film that most people probably don’t even clearly recall, it’s the perfect way to end The Saw is Family: Making Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone at this point in DVD history to find out that most “Making Of” segments, routinely attached to features as part of the DVD’s bonus materials package, are little more than documentary-style puff pieces in which the cast and crew spout platitudes and praise about their experience making the movie. This puffery serves as back-end publicity, to be sure, and maybe even convinces some viewers after the fact that the crummy movie they just sat through wasn’t really that bad after all. But it’s also valuable as an exercise in seeing just how far some of the participants will go to convince themselves that the experience was a good one, or to make enough nice-nice to ensure (or at least not completely destroy the chances of) their working in this town again, and with some of these same filmmakers.

Then what to make of the rare “making of” documentary that isn’t about propping up shaky pronouncements about the quality of the film in question, or about salvaging its reputation through a clever bit of historically revisionist video? What about the “making of” doc that comes right out and says, We tried to do something with this movie, but we were undercut at every turn by studio pressure, M.P.A.A. slashers and perhaps even our own ineptitude as filmmakers, but the movie bombed and it’s really not much good anyway. Wouldn’t seeing something like that be kind of refreshing? You’d think so.

But it turns out there’s a certain amount of hubris that comes naturally fused even to trotting out your failures. The cast and crew interviewed for The Saw is Family: Making Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III (available on the Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III DVD) are a motley assembly of unpretentious exploitation filmmakers (with the exception of the slickly pretentious New Line Cinema executive Mark Ordesky, who oversaw the production). They spend the requisite amount of time grooving on the splatter-punk cool of retelling grisly stories about serial murderer Ed Gein, on whom both Leatherface and Norman Bates were based. Just so you know he’s down with that, the documentary’s director, Jeffrey Schwarz, treats us needlessly to notorious crime scene photos from the Gein capture that prefigure the movie series’ toned-down tendency to feature corpses as slaughterhouse slabs on the hook. (Ordesky even refers to the “Ed Gein myth.” Gein’s neighbors, and certainly his victims, would probably dispute that characterization. Maybe Ordesky’s the only one who didn’t see the crime photos.) And everybody from feature director Jeff Burr to screenwriter David J. Schow to producer Robert Engelman to actor William Butler makes it very clear their reverence and appreciation for Tobe Hooper’s original Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) and even, to a lesser degree Hooper’s own 1985 sequel. (Burr correctly refers to the original as a “seminal American independent film.”)

It’s when they get to talking about their own film that the enthusiasm wanes and the smiles quickly turn upside-down. Burr and Butler are remarkably up front about how the studio continually put pressure on the director and made it clear that, even though he made it to the top of a short list of potential hires, they didn’t much like him or what he was doing. And when it comes time to submit the movie to the M.P.A.A. ratings board, it becomes clear that the movie is in for a little evisceration of its own. Burr speaks with admiration at one point about the now-defunct Cannon Pictures’ decision to release Hooper’s garishly gruesome and funny The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part Two without a rating rather than submit it to excessive cutting. And one can hardly blame him for hoping that New Line would similarly back Part 3—after all, Ordesky himself claims that the studio was enthusiastic about the “tough, nasty” script and wanted to make “a straight-ahead terrifying horror film.” So when Ordesky starts recalling his own back-pedaling after hearing ominous words about the movie being banned in foreign countries, it’s like watching a rat in a three-piece suit tell you all about how he tried to scurry off of a sinking ship:

“The film is going to have to be released overseas. So, to the extent that you push the envelope while making the movie, you’ve got to find artful ways around it in the editing of the movie… He knew he was obligated to deliver an “R” rating, so it wasn’t like he was being dictated to.”

In other words, go ahead and shoot it as gory as you want, but just know that it’s all gonna end up on the floor rather than in the movie. In these days of restored DVD director’s cuts and deleted scenes, a filmmaker is less likely to get all tied up in knots when confronted with such nonsensical logic. And many directors nowadays, from horror schlockmeisters right on up to Martin Scorsese, deliberately shoot too much gore and violence, planning ahead on what can be pruned without dismantling the director’s vision of the movie. But Burr, knowing his lowly status within the New Line family, probably figured, and correctly, that once chopped up his movie was likely to stay that way. In fact, Burr even recognizes the folly of referring to a piece of exploitation like Leatherface as “his movie.” He laments at one point, “The film can never be yours. (Thinking that it could) was my mistake.” He comes off the most sympathetic of all the interviewees, not least for the naiveté that’s mixed in with his desire to be remembered as a scrappy independent filmmaker whose vision wasn’t allowed fruition.

What’s left, beyond this group gathering together to memorialize a film best left forgotten, is the self-inflating comments of some of the other participants. William Butler, who stars in the film as “Ryan,” starts off the documentary proclaiming that “I was in one of the most infamous horror films ever made!” A quick scan of his credits on the Internet Movie Database made me scratch my head on this claim—could he be referring to Ghoulies II? Maybe he means Friday the 13th V: The New Blood? Surely he can’t be referring to the tepid 1990 remake of Night of the Living Dead, or to Watchers III? So I suppose we’re to understand he means to describe Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III as “one of the most infamous horror films ever made!” I don’t have a dictionary at hand, but one of the definitions of “infamous” must be something on the order of “rapidly escaping from memory and sense as if it were passed gas.” Butler also claims to have been killed on-screen by Jason Voorheis, Leatherface and Freddy Krueger, yet there seems to be no Nightmare on Elm Street movie among his credits, so just how seriously can we take his assessment of horror film history? Speaking of film history, Butler’s just glad to be counted among its participants:

“I’m very proud to be in (Leatherface) because, no matter what people say about it, it’s still a tiny piece of movie history.”

Undeniably true. Bigger even than the piece of film history occupied by Ghoulies II, perhaps, yet dwarfed by the influential shadow of Friday the 13th V: The New Blood. My question is: what doth a man gain from spending 26 minutes cruelly assessing a movie’s shortcomings before attempting a last-minute, badly formulated salvage job on the film’s place in history just before the credits roll? Butler functions better within the doc as snarky VH1-style comic relief punctuating the sad story of the film’s production. Sincerity doesn’t suit him, at least when referring to Leatherface.

The documentary’s best joke, however, is saved for last. Producer Robert Engelman, who functioned at one point as New Line’s hatchet man, delivering their ultimatums and threats of termination to director Burr, is as honest throughout as anyone else about the trials enduring in producing this movie about a adopted nuclear family of cannibalistic killers who while away their days snatching young travelers off the dusty roads of Texas (actually, Valencia, California), torturing them and serving them up for Sunday dinner. So when he offers up his last comment, it’s time for a big more head-scratching:

“When you’re filming it, it’s just fun and games. Everyone’s laughing and joking. You’re eating lunch next to the guy who’s dripping blood. It was like a real family, behind the camera as well as on camera.”

And then the perfect exclamation point for the entire documentary—a quick cut to a low-angle shot of William Butler wielding a large rock, which he uses to land a death blow on someone’s (the camera’s) head. Roll credits. The producer makes a lame joke, or a thoughtless comparison, equating the film’s troubled (and, from his point of view, troublesome) cast and crew with the movie’s in-bred homicidal flesh-eaters, and one of those cast members gets to drop a big rock on his skull in return. Whether it’s a pointed rebuttal to Engelman’s comments, sly visual retribution on the part of the film’s talent, above and below the line, or just a nifty way to put an end to all the twisting and squirming over a 15-year-old horror film that most people probably don’t even clearly recall, it’s the perfect way to end The Saw is Family: Making Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III.

Wednesday, March 09, 2005

As Matt Zoller Seitz reported in his column in the New York Press yesterday, Charles Taylor, senior film critic for the online magazine Salon, has been fired. Seitz writes:

"What the fuck was Salon thinking when it fired Charles Taylor, intellectually serious film critic and one of the finest, funniest wordsmiths in American journalism? Will Salon, a haven for provocative criticism and fresh cultural commentary, now become yet another unpaid arm of the entertainment business, serving up "features" that are actually long, snarky ads for the latest movies?"

Good, provocative questions for a magazine that prides itself, and advertises itself, on its independent voice, on being beholden to no special interests or agendas. A quick Google search provides no information on the situation, and several questions remain unanswered. What kind of further changes does this firing signal for the tone and depth of Salon's Arts and Entertainment coverage? Can Stephanie Zacharek's similar seriousness as Salon's remaining senior film critic suddenly be interpreted as a big red target on her back? And can Taylor, whose ideas I've sparred with on this site more than once, but who clearly belongs to a rich and thinning tradition of intellectually challenging yet accessible American film criticism, find a place that will regularly allow him the creative freedom and the simple opportunity to provide the kind of top-notch criticism both cineastes and serious filmgoers can appreciate? I've taken issue with Taylor's opinions and approaches to recent films such as Sideways and Million Dollar Baby. But he's also one of the only critics who wrote seriously and thoughtfully about such films as Femme Fatale, Out of Time and Shanghai Knights, honestly assessing their pleasures and their particular artistries when other writers clearly couldn't be bothered. And though I haven't yet revisited the movie myself, his passionate argument in favor of Showgirls, upon the release of its deluxe DVD edition earlier this year, was a provocative, old-school dust-'em-up, a challenge to smug tastemakers and weary audiences to be open to the possibilities in reevaluating an almost universally reviled specimen of trashy cinema. Whether he's right or wrong about Showgirls is almost beside the point. It was just nice to have someone with that sort of forum even pose the argument, and pose it in such a vital, readable and entertaining fashion.

If anyone has any information on the Taylor firing, I'd love to be linked to some resources that I could pass along. When good, even great writers get dumped by newspapers and high-profile Internet magazines in favor of syndicated "reviewers" and other dumbed-down entertainment press operatives, it's cause for alarm, one more membrane of the critic's independent voice that separates filmgoers from studio-generated publicity masquerading as journalism peeled away and discarded. Wherever Taylor surfaces, and my kneejerk hope is that he quickly will, that publication will be lucky to have him within their pages. I only hope that if they're smart enough to hire him, they'll be smart enough to resist the pressures of the culture and the marketplace and let him do the valuable work that he does alongside the best of American film critics.

Tuesday, March 08, 2005

Actress Teresa Wright died Sunday of a heart attack at the age of 86. Wright's introduction to Hollywood was of the storybook variety. Samuel Goldwyn saw her on Broadway in 1940 and asked her to play Bette Davis’ daughter in William Wyler’s The Little Foxes, a role for which Wright was nominated for the Academy Award. The following year she was nominated again for her work as Lou Gehrig’s supportive wife in The Pride of the Yankees, directed by Sam Wood, and again in 1942 for a role that would bring her the Oscar itself, the love interest of Greer Garson’s war-bound son in Wyler’s Mrs. Miniver. Her three-year relationship with the Oscar would mark the first and, to date, only time an actor of either gender has been nominated for the first three films of their career.

She would go on to star in The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), again for Wyler, and The Men (1950; Fred Zinneman), which also marked the film debut of Marlon Brando. But her eschewing of the Hollywood game, and the contractual demands she insisted upon which prevented Goldwyn from promoting her career with glamour girl publicity photos and planted romantic rumors for gossip columnists, would eventually lead the producer to terminate her contract in 1948. She would soon move back to the stage, where she felt she could more productively pursue her craft rather than her image, and then back to smaller roles in TV and movie productions. Her final film performance would come in 1997, in Francis Ford Coppola’s adaptation of the John Grisham novel The Rainmaker.

And according to the New York Times, she became quite the baseball fan as well, albeit for the wrong team, though her allegiance and interest is certainly understandable:

“In 1998, Miss Wright was asked to throw the first pitch at a Yankees game in honor of the anniversary of Lou Gehrig's famous farewell speech to fans in 1939, the climax of Pride of the Yankees. She said it was her first game. But after years of ignoring baseball, she then became a fervent fan herself, raptly following the Yankees on television and at their stadium.

‘The whole thing is pure theater to me,’ she explained.”

But for me the Teresa Wright performance is found at the heart and soul of Alfred Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt, ground zero for every postmodern “things are not what they seem” indictment of the undercurrent of evil in suburbia from Blue Velvet to American Beauty and well beyond. Wright’s portrayal of the guileless Charlie, whose family welcomes her beloved namesake Uncle Charlie (Joseph Cotten) for a visit, not knowing that he may be a serial murderer on the lam, is a beautifully modulated experience of violated innocence, of a girl who is forced to confront the world in all of its horrific implications in one fell, debilitating blow. And Hitchcock counters Wright’s glowing presence with a refreshingly unironic portrayal of small-town life (the film was cowritten by Thornton Wilder) that makes Uncle Charlie’s creepily pervasive influence seem all the more viral and evil for the kind of (now lost) communally receptive atmosphere that it threatens to destroy.

For all of her Oscar nominated performances, this is the role Teresa Wright seemed born to play. I’ll always remember her as Charlie.

Monday, March 07, 2005

I’m now a Netflix man. And if my first experience browsing through their selection is any indication, those of you who know me are likely to be seeing a whole lot less of me from now on.

In just a breezy hour or so, I had no trouble lining up about 40 selections for my queue. The Netflix way is to allow you to build up a list of up to 500 titles you’d like to see and rank them from 1 to 500, 1 being “next on my list to rent,” and 500 being “I wanna see it, but it’s my lowest priority.” You get three at a time, and as soon as you send one (or two, or three) back, Netflix ships the next three from your queue, keeping you constantly engorged on a plentiful DVD smorgasbord. All for $17.99 a month, whether you rent three or 30. No late fees. No shipping. My God, says most everyone I know who has the service, it’s like a dream come true. And now I can be counted among the dreamers.

My first three movies ship out tomorrow. I should have them in my sweaty, pudgy hands by Wednesday. And there are so many movies to choose from-- I feel like I barely skimmed the surface of the Netflix catalog while browsing last night. And each click on something reminded me of another title, or linked me to a page that had three or four other great ideas listed on it. I feel like I’m rediscovering the feeling of moving from Lakeview, Oregon, a many-horse but just a one-cinema town, to the relatively bustling college environment of Eugene, where a whole new world of campus screenings and revival theaters and bookings of foreign language films on some of the city’s many movie screens were a regular occurrence. Only now I’ve got a major percentage of what’s available on DVD at my fingertips, an incredible opportunity to fill in the glaring holes in my cinematic education and experience. It may not be the same as being a too-young college freshman (freshly 17) getting in to have my eyes opened by In The Realm of the Senses or Seven Beauties at the old Waco Theater behind the Williams Bakery (and my dorm hall) on Franklin Boulevard, just off the University of Oregon campus. But at age 44 it is close, and I’ll take close at age 44.

There are some lurking out there who may make me live to regret ever positing this idea, but what I’d like to do is now is take advantage of the cinematic experiences of anyone out there reading Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule and solicit suggestions for titles to put on my queue. I’m open to any genre, any language or subject. If there are films you’d like me to see, I probably wanna see ‘em, and I’d really appreciate either the reminder that they exist at all or the heads-up about a title or director with which I’m not familiar. So please feel free to either drop off suggestions in the Comments section below, or fire off an e-mail.

And now, because I know you’re just dying to know, may I present the first 40 position holders on my Netflix queue. I will go so far as to admit that of the 40 titles listed I have seen only three. Embarrassment about the holes in my tattered and incomplete history of film-watching prevents me from revealing which three films on the following list I have seen, but I will not discourage guesses, as long as they are submitted in a good-natured way not intended to further expose me as a sniveling cinematic philistine. I cop to a certain degree of sniveling philistinism, but I’m hoping that liberal application of Netflix two to three times a week will help clear up that unpleasant condition. Here’s my current queue:

Wednesday, March 02, 2005

I normally don’t like to patronize the big video chains if I can help it, but my neighborhood Blockbuster has suddenly stocked five or six non-mainstream titles that even my relatively adventurous Mom and Pop video store doesn’t carry. So I felt somewhat justified last week when I decided to pick up a two-day rental that I knew I wouldn’t be able to see for at least three days and test Blockbuster’s new “end of all late fees” policy. The gist of it is that you’re given a week’s grace period after the original return date has passed. Once that grace-period week has passed and you still haven’t returned the rental, your credit card is magically charged for the full purchase price of the DVD. At that point, you can just say “Great! I loved the movie! I’ll keep it!” or return it to the store, at which point Blockbuster credits the card on your account, less a $1.25 “processing fee.”

So it was that, six full days after it was officially due back to the store, I found myself finally able to sit down last Sunday afternoon and watch Ming-Liang Tsai’s Goodbye, Dragon Inn. Around 1:30pm I had gotten my youngest daughter down for a nap, and my oldest agreed to lay down in bed and rest as well, in preparation for the friends we had coming over to watch the big Oscar telecast later that evening. I had finished most of the house chores I needed to do in order to make the house look presentable to those who aren’t used to the kind of high-density clutter we scurry around in day after day (parents of toddlers will no doubt understand). Patty had gone out shopping, and I found myself in a quiet house with about two hours to kill before doing one last load of dishes. I suspected it might be the perfect afternoon to experience Tsai’s meditative film, one I had heard so much about in year-end top ten lists from film critics who have much more access to relatively obscure foreign films, and much more professionally funded time in which to take advantage of that access, than I do.

But I couldn’t have guessed just how perfect. Goodbye, Dragon Inn takes place in a grand old Chinese cinema on the night of its final performance before being permanently shut down. There is a torrential downpour happening outside, perhaps one reason (but not the main reason) why there are so few patrons inside. But there are patrons inside— among them, a Japanese tourist who stumbles in out of the rain looking more for shelter than entertainment; an old man and his grandson, the teacher giving his young student a lesson in the power of movies; a woman slowly, methodically chewing on peanuts as she gazes, mesmerized, or perhaps bored, at the screen; and another man who seems drawn to the images in the film unfolding before him in a much more personal way. These few filmgoers are dwarfed by the cavernous auditorium and the multitude of empty seats surrounding them, and the film’s sound, with no significant amount of bodies to soak it up, rattles and echoes off the bare walls, taking on a ghostly quality, as if it was being projected from another dimension.

And in a way it is. The film on screen is the classic martial arts drama Dragon Inn (1966), directed by King Hu (A Taste of Zen) and starring, among others, Tsao Jian and Shih Chun. We’re never told why this 39-year-old film is being shown as this cinema’s swan song. But the sights and sounds of the blistering, razor-sharp action scenes of Dragon Inn contrast with the emptiness of the theater and the stasis of the deliberately drawn-out takes in Tsai’s film to metaphorically illuminate the chasm between the modern-day audience and a film whose images of reflected light and meaningful shadows cry out and attempt to connect that audience to the past, to its reality, a reality frozen and unchanging on celluloid.

Tsai’s design is to create an eerie poetry of stillness from which the meaning of associative memory can well up and inform the apparent emptiness of what it is he shows us in his frames. Many of the film’s takes last two, three, four minutes, and document events that are certainly, on a cosmic scale, of a trivial or routine nature, in real time. The woman in the box-office, ready to sell tickets to customers who never come in, sits and observes the empty lobby while preparing a dumpling in a tiny electric pot. When she finishes making her food, she slices off a piece to share with the projectionist. It’s only when she emerges from the box-office to deliver the dumpling that we realize that she is handicapped-- one leg is shorter than the other-- and Tsai’s camera never looks away from her slow, difficult journey from the lobby downstairs, outside and back in through a door on the second floor, to the projection booth. She discovers the projectionist is away from his station, leaves the dumpling, and begins a long, arduous tour around the inside of the cinema, making final preparations for the final closing of its doors.

There are other long sequences in which, on the surface, very literally nothing seems to be happening— Tsai allows us to become absorbed in shots of the empty auditorium, of the woman methodically eating peanuts, of a man weeping at a martial arts drama that was never intended to provoke such emotions. Through such intimacy Tsai evokes a longing for the sounds and smells found only in cinemas, the touch of fabric of the cheaply upholstered seats, the chill in the air, the reverberating acoustics, the communal experience, even when that community is comprised only of five or six people, a form of experiencing art and entertainment that he quite literally shows us as passing away before our eyes. And he does so without resorting to the sentimentality that one might expect from a director depicting the ghostly evaporation of a beloved cathedral, a cathedral less ornate than impassioned and possessed by the reverberating sounds and images of all the films ever reflected by its silver screen.

There are ghosts within its walls, of light and celluloid, but also of flesh. And after those ghosts have passed through the cinema’s doors for the last time, they take with them the memory of seeing Dragon Inn's images projected here once again, as well as the memories of being those images in another place and time. Ming-Liang Tsai’s Goodbye, Dragon Inn comes to its quiet, uneventful close in the hours after those doors shut. There is no conclusion, no narrative wrap-up. Instead, the film drifts away, and we’re left to remember and reconstruct the cathedrals of our own moviegoing past, to ruminate on their meaning, to welcome our own ghosts back into our memories, to contemplate the changing experience of the movies, indeed, to contemplate the difference between Dragon Inn and Goodbye, Dragon Inn, and the chasm between a celluloid past experienced collectively and a digitized present that is more often, and often more satisfactorily, experienced alone.

Color bars. I shut off the TV and made my way to the kitchen. Dishes still had to be done before the Oscar show started. Imagining the upcoming excesses of that big back-patting session cast the evocative poetry of Goodbye, Dragon Inn and its unique embracing of cinema (and cinema) history in even more potent carbon-arc illumination. Here is a movie that somberly elucidates the art of film, and the art of experiencing a film in the kind of environment that is fast becoming enshrouded in the ghostly mists of the past. And I saw it on a DVD exhibited on the big screen TV in my living room. Later I would watch the royalty of Hollywood on that same big screen as they filed into a grand new theater that will itself likely never be used for the presentation of a motion picture, all to coronate Million Dollar Baby as the year’s best, and many of those who considered voting for it likely did so based on an industry screener DVD they watched in their own home, rather than using their Academy passes to see the film on a big theatrical screen. Goodbye, Dragon Inn understands the power of a place, a temple devoted to the worship of a multitude of gods, which cannot be replaced by convenience and cheap technology. For those who hold the experience of such places as important, as continually relevant, the movie extends beyond nostalgia, beyond a flight of fantasy, or of depressive reality. It inexorably finds a path directly to our core of being, where cinema connects most directly with those who would be rendered rapt with possibility as we face the screen, light playing over our faces, sound echoing and caressing and overwhelming our ears, immobile and inexpressive to the outside world, but churning with all the connections that the light and sound is making on the inside, an interior which, when it all comes together and the lights go down, is as big and welcoming as any grand old movie palace.

Tuesday, March 01, 2005

I started this blog site with the intention of writing about movies, baseball, baseball movies, and the ways the two fields of interest can unexpectedly intersect. But up to this point, though I've written plenty about film, I haven't devoted a whole lot of space to baseball, primarily because my enthusiasm for the sport far outstrips my knowledge of its intricacies and history and my ability to write eloquently and intelligently about it. And I've yet to visit and explore in print that special connection that binds baseball to some of the most important events, people and works of art in my life.

So I was really pleased when I checked in on Jon Weisman's Dodger Thoughts site this morning and found this well-written and thoughtful piece on the 1961 John Huston film The Misfits, a film written by the late Arthur Miller starring Marilyn Monroe, Clark Gable and Montgomery Clift. Some might wonder why, beyond his general enthusiasm and appreciation for it, the editor of Dodger Thoughts would give over so much space to an article about a film apparently unrelated to baseball or the Dodgers (he cites The Misfits as his favorite film). But, as Jon wrote to me in an e-mail this morning, "The Misfits is all about the human condition, and my love of baseball is secretly all about my human condition, so even though baseball is nowhere in that movie, I see a thread."

Jon weaves that thread eloquently in his article today. I intend to take it home and read it again tonight, when I can kick off my shoes, experience it (and reimagine the film) all over, and be inspired by some good writing. Enjoy.

The 77th Annual Academy Awards are in the books-- the mighty triumvirate of Eastwood, Swank and Freeman emerged victorious, despite the best efforts of Michael Medved and his goofy pals; The Incredibles snuck away with two statues, not just one; producer Gilbert Cates' attempts to corral the natural ebullience of the night's honorees were mocked and denigrated by several people appearing onstage, mostly memorably Adapted Screenplay winner Charlie Kaufman, who was rattled by the countdown clock placed in the winner's sight line and denounced it as "intimidating"; Sideways was not entirely denied, taking home Original Screenplay honors, nor was The Aviator, which dominated the technical categories, even allowing for Ray's "surprise" win in the Best Sound category.

But once again Martin Scorsese was not included in the glories of Oscar, except within the acceptance speeches of the honored technicians who helped create his film. He must now face the realization that he is the Academy Awards' very own Susan Lucci. Unlike the soap queen, however, who broke her losing streak at 19 Daytime Emmy nominations, he is unlikely to live long enough to make 14 more films, let alone be nominated another 14 times in order to get the gold on this masochistic, long-term plan. Indeed, if the Academy cannot find it in their hearts to hand him the Best Director award for a film like The Aviator, which is practically tailor-made to suit Oscar's tastes in epic stories filled with opulence, production values, bold acting and attempts to deal with historical figures, then Scorsese ought to stop pursuing the golden carrot as rabidly as he has with his last two movies and concede that the most likely avenue for his being awarded his very own Oscar is the lifetime achievement route most recently and enthusiastically traveled by Sidney Lumet. Speaking of Lumet, critic David Edelstein, wrapping up Oscar observations for Slate online, summed up the connections between the evening's three big directors best:

"It occurred to me that whatever his lefty New York politics, (Lumet) now had more in common with Clint Eastwood than with someone who might have been his natural heir, Martin Scorsese. Once upon a time, Scorsese took his camera into the streets. And even though his technique always bordered on Expressionism, he thrived on real locations and on actors who were clearly digging into themselves. Perhaps he needs to forget that he's a virtuoso, pick up a little Lumet, and go back to that original place."

Or, as my pal Cruzbomb wondered in his caustic piece on Oscar enthusiasm and the lack thereof, why would a director of Scorsese's caliber and originality care to so desperately seek admission to a club that has bestowed its highest honor upon the likes of Ron Howard, Mel Gibson and Kevin Costner?

The fact of the matter is, as Edelstein alluded, Martin Scorsese doesn't really make "Martin Scorsese" movies anymore-- Casino (1995) was an entertaining, if relatively hollow and overwrought attempt to revisit the milieu of GoodFellas (itself more hollow and overwrought than its reputation suggests) in a different context; 1999's Bringing Out the Dead was a paralyzing, flat-out unwatchable attempt to rejigger the existential doom of Taxi Driver, with mawkish undertones and uselessly hyperbolic style replacing the chilling first-person isolation that informed every word of Paul Schrader's 1976 screenplay (Schrader also wrote the screenplay for Bringing Out the Dead, adapting Joe Connelly's novel, and he feels like he's repeating himself too); and Gangs of New York was a misguided attempt, not without its own commendable qualities, to personalize, or Scorsesefy, if you will, a bloody swatch of New York City history, in which the director's own grotesque and grandiose tendencies ended up smothering his natural abilities as a storyteller. Movies like A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies (1995), Kundun (1997) and Mio viaggio in Italia (My Voyage to Italy) (1999) are much more recognizably Scorsese movies in their themes and obsessions, but they're not the kind of movies that will launch the director onto the stage at the Kodak Theater. Whether Scorsese will continue the pursuit of the Oscar is an unanswerable question. But his next movie, an announced remake of the Chinese police trilogy Infernal Affairs, starring Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson and Mark Wahlberg, doesn't look to be a move back toward a more inexpensive, intimately scaled canvas.

As for the Oscar show itself, it seemed to me, despite the efforts of journalists like Variety's Brian Lowry to put a predictably positive spin on it, to be near disastrous. The decision to gather the technical nominees together onstage behind the award presenter, with the winner emerging from the pack and walking toward the podium, didn't result in too much crushing embarrassment for the viewer, but it sure looked like some of the losers-- I'm sorry, some of those who were not honored wanted to be anywhere but on camera directly behind the winner, all nervousness and disappointment helplessly on display. Fittingly, they were hustled off the stage like Squeaky Fromme getting manhandled by Secret Service agents once their names were not announced. And lowly nominees in the makeup and short film categories weren't even allowed the dignity of taking the stage. In a move that was perhaps designed to kiss up to one of the event's most prominent attendees, these presentations, done mid-auditorium, the presenter, nominees and eventual winner with their backs toward most of the audience in the theater, lent the affair the quality of a very expensive installment of Oprah. Maybe Cates' thinking was that if the idea panned out well this year, they could talk the Richest Woman Alive into hosting next year's awards entirely in this comforting and inviting format that is most familiar to her.

(And what about those empty seats visible directly behind Cate Blanchett during the presentation of the Best Makeup award? Some wayward seat-filler, out grabbing a smoke at the time, hoping to run into Charlize Theron in the lobby, is undoubtedly paying dearly at this very moment for this ghastly transgression.)

How Cates and the Academy can ignore the obvious elitism and drawing of class lines that this sort of marginalization of "below the line" talent represents is beyond me. I only hope that he and his whole brain trust are raked over the coals for senselessly straitjacketing deserving nominees and their big opportunity to bask in a little of the kind of glory that stars like Tom Cruise and Gwenyth Paltrow take for granted. But, as Edelstein observed, instead he'll probably be toasted and lifted to the mountaintops for shaving 15 minutes off the show, and Lowry's glowing Variety review may be the first indication that Edelstein is right. (Okay, that's the last prop Mr. Edelstein is getting from me; you can check out his acidly funny observations on the show for yourself right here.)

By the way, the show did clock in 15 minutes shorter than usual. That's right, 15 minutes-- the difference, in ABC's and Cates' eyes, between stultifying boredom and breezily paced exuberance, perhaps? Maybe. The reality ended up being a race to the microphone whenever multiple winners were announced. By the time the first honoree finished speaking there was only time for a couple of syllables from the second before that familiar eruption from the orchestra pit signaled their unceremonious abduction by a force of mysterious, sinuous, very tall and well-dressed women presumably hustling them off to the press room. That's the presumption, anyway. But seriously, has anyone heard from the special effects team that won for Spider-Man 2 since their attempt to shout down those overwhelming musical cues last night?

Chris Rock looked genuinely flabbergasted at the kind of rude stubbing-out of acceptance speeches that became routine as the night wore on, and his joke about Oscars being handed out next year at a drive-thru-- "Get your Oscar and a McFlurry and just keep on goin'!"-- was a highlight of his raucously funny and relatively fearless commentary as this year's Oscar host. His hilarious, and good-natured, skewering of the ubiquity of actors like Colin Farrell and Jude Law (which itself inspired a sober retort from presenter Sean Penn, whose sense of humor seems to have been relegated to the past along with Jeff Spicoli) was like a spiky tonic, as was his intro to Halle Berry (the "star of the eagerly awaited Catwoman 2" was visibly not amused). And the taped interview segment in which patrons of the Magic Johnson Theaters were quizzed by Rock on their cinematic preferences was five minutes of pure Letterman-style genius (in the bit, Alien vs. Predator and The Chronicles of Riddick are held up for much praise, to Rock's very entertaining amusement, by star-struck popcorn munchers who haven't seen Sideways and wouldn't know Vera Drake from Shinola, and at one point a strange man who looks a lot like Albert Brooks shows up to extol White Chicks as "the best movie of 2004, bar none!"). Rock was just caustic enough, particularly about the new wrinkles in Oscar's format, to make me wonder if he would be asked back, or whether he'd even want the gig again (my guess: no). But if the ratings are up in any significant way, you can bet Scorsese's upcoming lifetime achievement award that Cates and the other Academy ratings whores will suddenly care a whole lot less about getting publicly tweaked by their bitterly funny host a second time.

Some other highlights of the evening:

Joan Rivers on the red carpet asking Imelda Staunton if the actress had met the character she played in Vera Drake, "or is she dead now?" The obviously embarrassed Staunton was forced to point out to Rivers that Vera Drake was, in fact, a fictional creation.

Jamie Foxx's emotional evocation of his dead grandmother, who he claims still speaks with him in dreams-- "I can't wait to go to sleep tonight, 'cause we got a lot to talk about."

Adam Sandler arriving onstage without copresenter Catherine Zeta Jones, for whom Rock ends up as a last-minute substitute. It was a joke-- right?-- and a pretty sly commentary on badly scripted stage banter as well.

Thelma Schoonmaker offering tribute to her director: "You think like an editor when you shoot."

Best Song winner Jorge Drexler, passed over by Cates to perform his own composition in favor of Antonio Banderas' Broadway-scaled version, getting the last laugh by singing an a cappella verse of the song in accepting the award.

Hilary Swank: "Mr. Eastwood, you are my mo cushla."

Most Beautiful Women of the Red Carpet (in alphabetical order): Sandra Oh, Sophie Okenedo and Kate Winslet. For those of you with a penchant for acronyms, that’s OOW! (Close, but no cigar, huh? If she’d only been Kate Hinslet…!)

An errant shot of the audience during the presentation of the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award revealed Louis Gossett Jr., head cocked back and visibly fast asleep in his plush Kodak Theater seat.

Charlie Kaufman being encouraged to take his time, in defiance of Cates' 30-second time clock: "I don't wanna take my time. I wanna get off the stage."

Those "four presenters," Penelope Cruz and Salma Hayek, who took the stage together to dispel suspicions in some quarters that they were actually the same person. I closed my eyes, listened, and became convinced that the same technology that allowed The Incredibles' Edna Mode to share the stage with Pierce Brosnan had been employed to split one of these lovely, English-mangling Latinas (but which one?!) in two, thus doubling Chris Rock's pleasure.

And, of course, the lowlights:

Beyonce is undeniably beautiful, but three songs was way too much Beyonce, especially when it was clear that, during her phonetic French number and the Andrew Lloyd Webber atrocity, she had no idea what to do with her body when she wasn't singing. The dull inspirational ballad “Believe” from The Polar Express was more her speed, unfortunately, and she undulated appropriately while dueting with Josh Groban, but ultimately the song was no less crappy for it. Instead of scraping the bottom of the barrel in order to come up with five nominees, can’t this category just be scrapped altogether, as the dearth of worthy candidates dictates? How’s that for a time-saving measure, Mr. Cates?

And, finally, the return of a hallowed tradition of Academy Awards broadcasts, one that hasn’t been paid much tribute since its halcyon days in the 1970s: the untimely and very loud dropping of large objects backstage, creating ungodly crashing sounds sure to unsettle even the most centered of AC-tors, such as “comedy superstar” Jeremy Irons. Backstage personnel bounding out from behind curtains, during the live broadcast, to supply the host with a missing microphone-- another treasured subcategory in this tradition that also was on display Sunday night. Thank you again, Mr. Cates, for not keeping those stage hands on as tight a leash as the artists you have gathered together to ostensibly honor.

And for those interested, my name ends up not being Mudd after all. My online predictions were pretty good, but my Oscar Pool ballot turned out even better. I did vary slightly from the published list, as I suspected I would, but this year doing so didn’t fatally screw me up. In fact, I ended a 17-year losing streak and took the big prize in the Oscar pool for the first time. I feel like the Boston Red Sox, for God’s sake. Speaking of which, if I can finally win the damn pool, I wonder if I could be so bold as to take that win as a good omen for the 2005-model Dodgers...